In response to a very difficult financial and political climate for the arts, the Foundation held a series of consultations in the autumn of 1979 which concluded that there was ‘an urgent need for a fundamental appraisal of the use of money in the arts in general, the sources of it and how it is distributed, coupled with a programme to improve the understanding of these issues amongst patrons and sponsors’.

As a result, the Foundation set up the Arts Initiative and Money (AIM) project, which aimed to help artists and small artistic ventures to make better use of their existing financial and management resources, to exploit their opportunities more effectively, and to understand better the various sources from which help might be drawn. To achieve, these objectives, the AIM project Committee worked in two ways. Firstly, it assessed grant applications and passed its recommendations to the Foundation and secondly it initiated its own projects and research.

The AIM report outlines the AIM project’s objectives, discusses the grant applications it assessed and details the projects and research it undertook. An extensive appendix gives information on the grant recipients.

Redmond Mullin is a writer and chair of Redmond Mullin Associates, consultants in fundraising and management for non-profit organisations.